Kevyn Orr rode into Detroit on the wheels of a financial calamity and was given carte blanche by the governor to fix the financial mess while also fixing what caused it.

So the University of Michigan Law School graduate, who wasn’t hampered by relationships or fear of firing friends, has done what politics and tradition and malaise had not for 60 years: change the way things work.

Love him or hate him — and there are plenty of people on both sides — Orr did it ingeniously, sometimes stealthily. And had it been happening somewhere else, it might have been an epic film we were watching, one with twists and turns, heartache and victory.

Let’s go with that a second: Imagine Detroit’s misery as a movie that opens with former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s election and the high hopes it brought. The roller coaster dips with the city’s financial struggles and rises as Kilpatrick strikes the first grand bargain, a billion-dollar loan that was celebrated by New York bankers and ignored by Detroit residents who wouldn’t find out for years what it would mean for their pensions. Scandal! A corruption trial! The revelation that the first grand bargain was no bargain, but was an anchor around the city’s neck!

In the second act, in rides Orr to file for the largest bankruptcy in American history. He spends no time outlining how bad the problem is, warning retired pensioners that they could lose a fifth of their income. But wait! Here comes the next twist! Only a few months later, Orr has negotiated that 20-25% income loss down to a 4.5% cut to the monthly checks of general retirees and no cuts for police officers and firefighters. With some grumbling, but a trembling sigh of relief, nearly everyone — pensioners and creditors alike — votes to accept the deal.

Orr, fresh off that victory, privatizes everything he can while working with Mayor Mike Duggan to introduce better technology for city employees who had been forced for years to complete their work by hand.

He closes the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department and opens the Metro Detroit regional water cooperative, now maintained by every municipal entity that accepts water.

Yes, that would make quite a movie.

In real life, Orr will make sure property taxes are collected and he’ll raise revenue by charging $45 for once-$10 parking tickets. (I just paid my first one.)

Then he will leave, handing the baton to Duggan to conduct an orchestra he didn’t create but plans to make world-class.

Duggan wasn’t allowed to run the police department, but he’ll begin crime fighting in earnest, making major changes, if necessary.

And he’ll have to change the national conversation about this city, making clear that it isn’t a poster child for disaster but a pilot program for how to turn around urban centers.

And that imaginary film can mirror real life if there’s a surprise twist at the end: Judge Steven Rhodes, in his final decision, accepts that the money Kilpatrick borrowed is an illegal debt and wipes it out, which, now that we think about it, appears to be something some judge could have done before Detroit declared bankruptcy.